4.8 The EU’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum

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BOX 4.8 The EU’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum

In September 2020, the European Commission proposed a New Pact on Migration and Asylum with the final objective to maximize the benefits and address the challenges related to migration in the region. The Pact lays out a comprehensive approach to migration, stressing the importance of (a) improved and faster procedures, (b) fair sharing of responsibility and solidarity, and (c) trust between European Union (EU) member states as well as confidence in the system. As part of the proposed holistic approach aimed at building a predictable and reliable migration management system, the Pact emphasizes the importance of improving cooperation with the countries of origin and transit, ensuring effective procedures, successfully integrating refugees, and returning of those with no right to stay.

Several strategies are proposed to accelerate asylum decisions, discourage irregular migration, strengthen legal pathways, and enhance returns. These strategies include (a) a proposed “one-stop asylum” system to speed up the asylum decision process, (b) establishment of a solidarity system to allow EU member states to choose between relocating refugees or sponsoring returns, (c) enhanced border control; (d) strengthened returns processes, and (e) stronger partnerships with third countries to prevent smuggling while at the same time promoting legal pathways and strengthening readmission agreements and arrangements.

The Pact highlights the importance for the EU of attracting foreign talent to address emerging labor shortages due to a shrinking and aging population. The establishment of an EU Talent Pool is one of the actions suggested to match workers to employers’ needs. The Pact also suggests the establishment of Talent Partnerships as an example of collaborations with third countries to create better job opportunities in sending countries and legal paths to the EU. These partnerships would have four key elements: • Supporting legal migration with key partners, scaling up existing cooperation • Establishing work and training mobility schemes with EU funding and matching EU vacancies and skills • Building capacity for vocational training and reintegration of returning migrants • Working together with ministries, employers, and social partners as well as education and diaspora groups.

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As of November 2021, the Pact was not yet in effect, and negotiations between the EU member states remained deadlocked. The European Commission’s detailed “Report on Migration and Asylum” stated that, one year since the New Pact’s presentation, “There has been good progress at [a] technical level, but political agreement on some key elements is still distant.”

Sources: EC 2020b, 2020c, 2021a; Hein 2021.

in 2014 sets common standards for the entry, residence, and protections of seasonal workers. However, member states still have full control of the total number of yearly admissions and flexibility on various parameters such as maximum duration of stay, reentry, and changes of employers (SVR Research Unit and MPI Europe 2019).

The bilateral agreement between Spain and Morocco, implemented since 2005, focused on employment opportunities for Moroccan seasonal workers in the Spanish agriculture sector. Under this agreement, Moroccan workers have been allowed to work in Spain for a maximum of six months per year, with the potential to be employed again in following years if complying with the terms of the agreement. While not allowing a path to permanent residence, this agreement has been an important instrument to fill labor shortages in Spain while at the same time ensuring a secure source of income for Moroccan seasonal workers without exposing them to the risks of undocumented migration.

Switzerland has also been particularly active in developing bilateral mobility schemes with sending countries (such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Nigeria, Serbia, and Tunisia) to promote circular migration and curb undocumented flows. Similarly, Poland entered into bilateral agreements (first with Ukraine and later with Georgia and Moldova) with a focus on domestic services, nursing, cleaning, construction, and agriculture (Triandafyllidou, Bartolini, and Guidi 2019). Germany’s Western Balkan Regulation (box 4.9) and the Triple Win Program (box 4.10) are other examples of mobility schemes that offer useful insights for the design of legal pathways for migration in the extended Mediterranean region.

Lessons learned . The lessons learned from agreements implemented so far could inform the negotiation of future schemes. Schemes that provide future visa-based incentives have proven more effective than mere compulsory return policies. For example, when the Spanish government required seasonal workers in Spain to return to Morocco, 60 percent of the workers overstayed their visas. However, when the

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BOX 4.9 The Western Balkan Regulation

Germany’s Western Balkan Regulation is an interesting example of a temporary mobility scheme designed to reroute irregular migration into regular channels. The Western Balkan Regulation (currently extended through 2023) represents an exception among the channels available for third-country nationals to work in the European Union, because it allows nationals from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia to be employed in Germany without any skills or qualification requirements as long as they have a job offer for which no eligible person in Germany can be found.

The regulation was introduced in response to the steadily increasing inflows of Western Balkan citizens arriving in Germany and filing for asylum even though barely 1 percent of them would normally qualify for protection (Bither and Ziebarth 2018). As the number of applications from these migrants reached over 120,000 in 2015, and recognizing the limited alternatives for them to apply for work visas, the German government introduced this directive in 2016 to decongest the asylum system while at the same time addressing employers’ needs.

The demand from employers and potential migrants has been significant. As of May 2020, more than 300,000 applications were submitted, with over 244,000 being approved (Brücker et al. 2020). In the 2016–17 period, almost 40 percent of the approved applications resulted in visas being issued, with over 44,000 Western Balkan workers benefiting from the regulation. Although the contemporaneous drop in the number of first-time asylum seekers from the Western Balkan region may suggest that the regulation has contributed to rerouting migrants from the asylum channel to the economic channel of admission, it is difficult to assess the causality of this relationship given the many asylum policy measures introduced by the German government at the same time (Bither and Ziebarth 2018).

Several lessons can be drawn from the first five years of implementation of the Western Balkans Regulation. A recent study by the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) of Germany’s Federal Employment Agency highlights that although no specific skills or qualification levels were required as part of the directive, more than 50 percent of the work visas issued were related to skilled jobs (Brücker et al. 2020). Overall, the skills of selected workers were a good match for the jobs they were hired to perform, and their labor market integration was successful when considering employment

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stability and earnings. These findings were consistent for both high- and low-skilled workers compared with other migrant groups and German job entrants. As such, the study concludes that “the Western Balkans regulation has achieved the goal of the legislation, namely, to facilitate labor migration and to ensure successful labor market integration. At the same time, this brought about economic benefits and additional revenue for the state and the social insurance systems” (Brücker et al. 2020, 11).

The regulation’s success notwithstanding, some important lessons can also be learned from areas of the regulation that would benefit from improvements. Particularly when these programs are designed, attention needs to be paid to potential capacity bottlenecks and administrative restrictions that could cause significant delays, thus preventing employers from filling labor shortages in a timely manner. A clear communication strategy also needs to be developed to ensure that both employers in receiving countries and potential migrants in sending countries are aware of these new legal migration channels. Finally, strict verification of employers’ compliance is also an important element to ensure that the rights of migrants are not violated and that this channel is not used at the expense of local workers (Bither and Ziebarth 2018).

government instead made the next year’s work visa conditional on having returned home the previous year, only 8 percent of workers overstayed their visas (GonzálezEnríquez and Reynès-Ramón 2011). Such policies, which promote circular and temporary migration, also ease natives’ worries about the potential negative impacts of immigrant arrivals on the labor market.

To maximize the efficiency gains from migrants, policy makers could consider tailoring bilateral labor agreements to the needs of their labor markets, targeting occupations in which the host countries face labor shortages or rising labor demand. However, linking migrants’ legal status to employment with only one specific employer could give firms too much power over workers and result in negative outcomes for both migrants and natives (Norlander 2021). Because migrants are filling essential labor gaps, the agreements could explicitly include certain protections for migrants, including direct-deposit mechanisms to prevent wage theft, gender-specific protections, and a fair and transparent implementation of the agreement contents about working conditions and rights (Testaverde, Moroz, and Dutta 2020).

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BOX 4.10 The German “Triple Win” program

The heavy involvement of, and financing by, employers is a success factor of the German “Triple Win” program. As part of this program, Germany has identified countries with a surplus of professional nurses who cannot find employment in their home countries and whose qualifications can be recognized in Germany. The predeparture phase in the home countries involves language and cultural orientation training, while the recognition of professional certificates takes place in receiving countries.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Philippines, Serbia, and Tunisia are the partner countries for this project. The program’s sustainability derives from the heavy involvement of employers and a variety of other actors at different stages of the program. Employers provide the funds to finance this initiative, which in less than 10 years has given labor market access to over 5,000 workers from the four partner countries.

Source: SVR Research Unit and MPI Europe 2019.

Action 9: Address misinformation and raise awareness of migrants’ contributions The COVID-19 pandemic brought health risks that triggered various antimigration episodes, but long-term international travel restrictions have been shown to be not only ineffective in stopping the pandemic but also severely costly for both receiving and sending countries (as further discussed in the previous chapters). For this reason, addressing misinformation and ensuring that people are aware of the key role played by migrants in receiving and sending societies will be crucial to address the potential rise of antimigration sentiments.

For these interventions to be successful, the choice of content and channels used to share information matters. A large-scale randomized experiment in Japan finds promising evidence on the role that information sharing can play in countering negative attitudes toward migration. A large national sample of citizens who participated in a text-assessment study were randomly exposed to information about potential social and economic benefits from immigration, and “this exposure led to a substantial increase in support for a more open immigration policy (Facchini, Margalit, and Nakata 2016). Communication efforts that engage the audience in perspective-taking exercises and draw parallels between migrants’ lives and natives’ personal experiences have also shown to be promising in increasing trust toward migrants (Rodríguez Chatruc and Rozo 2021).

Many initiatives introduced across the Mediterranean region since the start of the pandemic provide examples of actions to combat the misinformation that stigmatizes

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migrants and refugees. France, Germany, Italy, and Spain were active in this area in 2020 and 2021, in partnership with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and local organizations (OECD 2021). In line with these efforts, some countries also rewarded the contributions of essential foreign workers during the pandemic. For example, France has fast-tracked citizenship for a number of foreign frontline workers (Moroz, Shresta, and Testaverde 2020).

International organizations have also addressed misinformation. For instance, the UN’s “Verified” initiative invited influencers, civil society members, and business and media organizations to be “digital first responders” or “information volunteers” to share only verified, trusted content and to combat misinformation (UN 2020). With similar intentions, Irish Aid and the IOM founded the Global Migration Media Academy to give journalism and communications students worldwide the tools, contextual knowledge, and ethical standards needed to report factually on migration (IOM 2021). The IOM has implemented similar initiatives in North and West African countries over the past few years (box 4.11).

Over the past three years, as part of the European Union–International Organization for Migration (EU-IOM) Regional Development Protection Programme, the IOM together with other journalists has trained more than 300 media students, journalists, and editors in Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. The training program aims to help these media professionals cover the topic of migration in a more factual and accurate way. For instance, it teaches them how to use proper terminology in covering key migration topics such as the difference between irregular migration, trafficking, and smuggling. The initiative grew out of a master’s program in media and migration developed with Morocco’s Higher Institute of Information and Communication.

In 2018, the IOM also conducted several workshops in West and Central Africa for media practitioners, attracting more than 600 participants. Similarly, the objective of these workshops was to train these professionals on proper ways of reporting on migration, including learning about local, regional, and global migration contexts; the use of language; and the legal implications of the terminology used when speaking about migration. Participants were then encouraged to change and improve the conversation about migration in the press in their home countries.

BOX 4.11 Improving the accuracy of migration coverage in North and West Africa

Source: Pace, Zayed, and Borgnäs 2020.

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Action 10: Strengthen data capacity to apply an evidence-based approach to migration policy making Even before the COVID-19 outbreak, the United Nations (UN) Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration identified the collection of accurate data on international migrants as an important gap to fill. The Migration Global Compact mentions the need to “collect and utilize accurate and disaggregated data” as an important objective to inform evidence-based policies (UN 2019). For instance, assessing labor market needs and whether the existing supply of workers is sufficient to meet the demand is crucial to inform decisions on the quantity and skill mix of migrants to admit in a country, thus helping employers fill gaps that cannot be filled by local workers. Similarly, information about nationals abroad and about returnees is important to allow sending countries to design potential policies in support of these groups and the families they leave behind.

Currently, when available, migration data mainly come from national statistics based on population censuses, household surveys, and administrative data sources. Although these data sources are useful to provide a general picture of overall migration trends over time, each of them comes with pros and cons, which need to be carefully considered before using them for migration-related analysis. The need to include more detailed questions on migration in regular household surveys and to potentially carry out ad hoc surveys to fill any remaining information gaps is a priority common to many countries and economies in the extended Mediterranean region, to varying extents. Furthermore, when relevant data are collected, ensuring that they are accessible to carry out policy-relevant analysis is fundamental to promote an evidencebased approach.

A combination of ad hoc migration and standard household surveys, together with census and administrative data, can be useful for receiving countries in the Mediterranean to gain useful insights on the migrant populations living within their borders. Standard labor force surveys can provide useful information on migrants as long as information on country of birth or citizenship has been collected from respondents. However, because these surveys are not specifically designed to capture information on migrants, small sample sizes and potential biases in the sample of the foreign population may limit the extent to which these data can be used to inform policy. Census data, given their universal coverage, are an ideal source to address the small sample size issue; however, their reduced frequency and relatively limited amount of labor market and migration information do not always allow for a detailed analysis of migration patterns. To address this issue, some receiving countries have carried out ad hoc surveys targeting the migrant population. The Spanish National Immigrant Survey conducted in 2007–09 is an example of these efforts.

Longitudinal surveys—surveys that track respondents over time—are the most powerful sources of data to better understand migrants’ trajectories in host countries’ labor markets and societies. France’s Longitudinal Survey of the Integration

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of First-Time Arrivals (launched in 2010) and the Survey of Refugees in Germany (launched in 2016) are examples of good practices that can effectively inform migration policy making.2

Finally, administrative data from government agencies can also be used to gain interesting insights on the impacts of migrants on the local labor market (Garrote Sanchez 2019). For instance, Foged and Peri (2016) use administrative longitudinal data for Denmark to examine how an increased inflow of low-skilled refugee immigrants would affect the market for low-skilled labor. They find that “an increase in the supply of refugee-country immigrants pushed less educated native workers (especially the young and low-tenured ones) to pursue less manual-intensive occupations. As a result immigration had positive effects on native unskilled wages, employment, and occupational mobility” (Foged and Peri 2016, 1).

Sending countries face significant limitations in their ability to collect information about their citizens living abroad as well as returnees, but some promising practices have emerged in the region. Surveys that include questions about family members residing abroad are helpful to gather partial information on current migrants, but these questions do not capture migrants who have moved abroad with all members of their households. The identification of returnees in survey or census data is, in principle, easier, because data collection tools could include detailed questions about migration history. However, many sending countries and economies in the Mediterranean region do not include these questions in household surveys or census data, implying that returnees can only be approximately identified by checking whether respondents report having lived abroad in the previous years. To address some of these issues, the EU Labour Force Surveys in 2008 and 2014 included an ad hoc module focused on migration, which yields interesting insights on the characteristics and labor market outcomes of returnees.

Several countries within and outside the Mediterranean region have conducted ad hoc migration surveys. For instance, the 2013 Albania Return Migration Survey and the 2018/19 Bangladesh Return Migrants Survey included questions on migration trajectories, socioeconomic conditions before departure, education and employment abroad, and reintegration in their home country upon return (Garrote Sanchez 2019).

Egypt has also undertaken significant data efforts to better understand the dynamics of outmigration and return migration in the country. For instance, the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey conducted in 1988, 1998, 2006, 2012, and 2018 included a detailed module on migration and remittances, enabling the collection of detailed data about the characteristics of household members living abroad. This data source has been key to gaining insights on different aspects of return migration in the country (El-Mallakh and Wahba 2021a, 2021b; Wahba 2015). The 2013 Egypt Household International Migration Survey is another example of migration data collected to gain further insights on the drivers and impacts of migration from Egypt.